Paintball is a recreational activity in which participants compete, individually or in teams, to eliminate opponents by tagging them with frangible capsules filled with water-soluble dye propelled by a paintball marker or a paintball gun. With increase in popularity, paintball has progressed to become a professional sport in several countries, with tournaments being held across the world. Conventionally, participants of paintball require three basic pieces of equipment for playing the game which are a paintball marker or gun, paintballs, and a mask or goggles. The paintballs are loaded into a hopper positioned on the paintball marker. Typically, a paintball marker holds about 200-250 paintballs. In a typical paintball game, a participant uses about 1000 paintballs.
Traditionally, paintballs are stored in containers referred to as ‘pods’ or ‘paintball pods’. The paintball pods are cylindrical and have a lid or cap to prevent loss of paintballs. When a participant runs out of paintballs, he/she must load a fresh set of paintballs from a pod to continue in the game. The participant must carry multiple pods and open each one individually to reload the marker. This is time consuming in a fast-paced environment such as a paintball game and may result in the participant being marked by a rival and ultimately losing the game.
Furthermore, when playing paintball aggressively, the task of reloading the paintball marker may not be carried out properly. In some applications, paintball is used by military forces, law enforcement, para-military, and security organizations to supplement training as well as simulate hostile scenarios. For such applications, reloading the paintball marker must be done rapidly. Additionally, paintballs must not be lost due to fumbling or improper loading. Typically, when a participant loads a paintball marker from conventional paintball pods, a few paintballs may fall to the ground without being inserted into the paintball hopper. Moreover, the participant could drop the pod and loose many paintballs.
Hence, there is a long felt but unresolved need for a bag that stores paintballs and loads the paintballs to a paintball marker or gun rapidly. Furthermore, there is a need for a bag that enables loading of the paintballs into the paintball marker without spilling or losing any of the stored paintballs.